Thaw
by KuraOkami13
Summary: Pokespecialverse, AU. Misty finds a severely wounded Lance on her doorstep. Against her better judgement, she takes him in. Between healing, leaving, hiding, and fighting, from the crippling defeat at Cerise to the showdown with Arceus, Lance is forced to come to terms with his past and present, and basically has a nice long bumpy road of redemption. Slowburn LanceMisty/Kingdraship
1. Yellow

Multi-chaptered series of vignettes from a Pokespecial universe story I don't have the time nor the effort to make. Basically, Lance was injured in the controntation of the final Yellow chapter, escapes, and ends up in Cerulean. He gets taken in by Misty, they fight, they get used to each other, Lance leaves because he scares himself, comes back post GSC, leaves, keeps an eye on Misty, HGSS happens, comes back, and basically has a nice long redemption road while also figuring out how to coexist with humanity and falling in love.

So yeah. Eventually Kingdrashipping. Try not to be so surprised.

* * *

~•• Yellow ••~

Defeat was not a familiar companion for him. He had always excelled as a trainer, and the addition of his powers had only _always_ guaranteed him victory. Some part of him had stayed wary that his plan of eradicating the human race might go awry, thus he had been careful and meticulous with his planning. Every detail had been examined and considered, including the presence of Oak's special trio kids, the flippancy of Giovanni and his attendance tendencies, and even Yellow's presence in the whole matter. And somehow, all of his hard work and meticulous planning had been shattered and forcibly thrown down the drain by whatever power Yellow had managed to unleash with a Pikachu she didn't even legally own, thanks to some kind of overpowering desperation and something else he could not figure out for the life of him.

Literally for his life, because he was currently bleeding out of his chest from the stab wound courtesy of Giovanni's Beedrill.

-o00o-

It was hours, possibly the entirety of daylight when Dragonite was eventually forced to land, too burdened by his own exhaustion of battle to continue flying with his trainer in his arms. Lance was pressed to agree, able to sense his companion's exhaustion even through the haze of his mind from all the blood loss. The smooth, soft cries of two concerned Dragonairs whispered into his mind, informing him vaguely of the city Dragonite had landed in. When he had sent his numerous Dragonairs to the various cities of Kanto to occupy all the gym leaders so as to prevent their meddling, he remembered sending two of them to Cerulean City.

The Cerulean Dragonairs had reported to him as being fond of the city. It had near immediate access to water, and was very open and the air was clean and fresh for them to inhabit in. To his occasional frustration, the two had also reported being seen by the city's gym leader, and being offered treats and various forms of kindness often. This made them fond of the gym leader, and while they didn't disobey their master when the day came to enter the final phase of his plan, the two Dragonairs occupying Cerulean made sure to not outright hurt anyone or the gym leader, which had unfortunately prompted Agatha to step up and send her Ghastlys and Haunters to, ahem, make up for their "softness".

So when the Dragonairs still in Cerulean had answered Dragonite's roar for aid, he shouldn't have been surprised when they directed Dragonite right to the doorstep of the Cerulean Gym Leader's home.

In reality, he was actually very surprised, as surprised as he could be with all the blood loss making him dizzy and lightheaded anyway.

-o00o-

He fell unconscious right about as she opened the door and screamed.

-o00o-

Lance was equal parts confused and surprised when he awoke in a room that, based on the dresses and skirts falling out of the western wall's closet, belonged to a girl. For one, he was awake therefor alive. Two, he wasn't in a prison cell so he had been accepted into someone's-The Cerulean Gym Leader's he assumed- house. Three, he was still alive. It deserved some repeating.

The door to his far left suddenly opened and in walked a girl carrying fresh bandages and a bottle of pain pills.

She almost dropped the pills and bandages when she screamed again, right as he blacked out, _again_.

-o00o-

He awoke again, this time in the middle of the gym leader replacing the bandages that were wrapped firmly around his chest. She tied the final knot with a tight tug that ensured it wouldn't come undone by any other means other than her own handiwork. He also noticed that his head was swimming and sore and when he placed his hand to the spots, there were two painful swollen knots.

"I promised your Dragonite I wouldn't any more, but I swear, if the next words out of your mouth are going to be a another bout of threats against me and my friends, I'm going to whip out my mallet again and knock you out a third time, got it?" She snarled at him.

Lance was going to have to question his Dragonairs and their judgement skills.

-o00o-

When his body had regenerated enough blood that he was no longer collapsing every thirty minutes, he finally got to have an actual conversation with his host.

It had ended in a screaming match, where she only got him to concede defeat by threateningly whipping out her trusty mallet. After the third scream-fight, he had concluded that Misty, the Cerulean Gym Leader, was the most irate, temperamental, irrational being he had ever met, and that was saying something coming from the boy who had spent a considerable amount of time with _Agatha_ , due to having to collaborate with his cohorts for the plan.

-o00o-

He was still unable to move from her bed, and that disgusted him about as much as the fact that he was still going to be dependent on a human and especially one such as her, because even after a week of resting in it, the damn covers and sheets smelled like _her_.

He had never hated the scent of honey and lemon with saltwater more.

-o00o-

Lance had thought he had hated the human race before, but somehow his hatred was amplified and focused all entirely on Misty. She grated his every nerve, the feeling evidently mutual, and she tightened his bandages too tight, and somehow she was stronger than him, enough that every time he tried to get out of the bed she was able to shove him right back down as if she was dealing with a powerless toddler. Everyday she didn't stop to remind him that she hated him too, how he had tried to hurt her friends, and done so much damage to other people, their homes, their _pokemon_.

He rebuked back that sacrifices had to be made to ensure his plan had worked, to create a world for pokemon free of the ugliness of humanity.

That one had earned him a disbelieving glare, enraged snarls of a girl who loved her pokemon too much to let them go like that and someone too confused and open to understand how he could possibly think that way, and angry, hurt tears.

He was mostly satisfied and smug that he had managed to win that conversation, if there had been any real competition.

Mostly...

-o00o-

"You are just-the worst, you jerk! You could at least shut up, for _once_ , and just let me help you better so you can leave and be on your stupid, genocidal way!" one day she yelled at him, because, as usual, he couldn't _not_ keep his mouth shut when they were so many buttons to press. To be further fair, once the incident that had changed him from an innocent child to a boy who absolutely had to permanently clean up the tarnish of humanity had occurred, he had sworn off unnecessary human contact, meaning he was never raised to leave a person be, to not egg her on and or intentionally start a screaming match with the Gym Leader of Cerulean City. Mew above, it probably would have saved him from a lot of hoarse throats if he did know better.

"Why do you even care that I heal!? Why do you care that I live at all? Ugly human that you are, you should have let me die, or have killed me by now!" he snapped back, but to his surprise she doesn't fire off with another comeback. Instead she froze, staring at him with the most incredulous, horrified and hurt look that made his skin crawl and his stomach churn into painful twists.

"...you really think... that I would want you dead? That I would _want_ to kill you?" she asked him in a voice pumped full of shock and horrified awe and a little bit of disbelief. It was then that her green eyes changed into something he had never seen before, not from her, and not from any other human being in his life... except Yellow.

"What happened?" she asked tentatively of him.

"What are you talking about?" he snapped irately, not liking the turn of events that had suddenly flipped into his lap. Where had the irrational harpy that he was used to gone? Where was the rage, the hate? He could understand those, having lived with rage and hate in his heart for so long. He could handle that but this-this concern, or pity, or _compassion_ , he couldn't possibly begin to wrap his mind around it.

"What happened to you, to make you think-no, believe, so little of me?" _Of humanity? Of goodness and kindness, or mercy?_ Were the underlying questions that he swore she was leaving unspoken but definitely felt.

-o00o-

He was finally able to get up, but the effort to stay up tired him very easily.

To his further embarrassment and hatred, Misty was kind enough-to remind him of his powerlessness, he was sure-to help him around and keep him steady as they maneuvered around the house to wherever she needed him to be.

"Why are you doing this?" he demanded. Her right hand was tight on his waist while her arm stuck solidly to his back. The left hand rested on his left shoulder, helping front support as they walked him to the living room.

She shrugged noncommittally.

-o00o-

He hadn't been counting, nor had he been paying attention, but at some point during the second and third of the four weeks he had been staying in the house of the Cerulean Gym Leader, Lance and Misty had stopped yelling like they were trying to kill each other through their vocal chords. That wasn't to say they stopped arguing, because for the life of him Lance couldn't _not_ press her buttons and Misty couldn't _not_ immediately react to that.

"Why are you doing this?" he snapped again.

She made a sort of grunt that he supposed could be taken to mean her usual answer; she didn't know.

-o00o-

He fell, again, for the third time that week when she began to allow him to walk without her arms holding him up. As always she was immediately by his side, offering a hand to help lift him back to his feet, and he asked once more as he took it, "Why are you doing this?"

"I dunno," she answered him honestly, pulling him up to his feet, yet his inner rage continued to convince him there was an ulterior motive somewhere, there had to be.

-o00o-

The tea cup was already at her lips and she was mid sip when he asked, again, for what must have been the one-hundredth time after two weeks, "Why are you doing this?"

There was a bowl of creamy potato and leek soup on the table below his jaw, still steaming and almost deceivingly untouched were it not for the spoon stuck in its contents. He had taken one tedious spoonful and taken his time to let all its flavors sink into his tongue before allowing it to pass his throat. After finishing that first bite, he had pressed her for that one question he wanted an answer to.

She stopped, swallowed, and set the cup down next to her own bowl of soup, and he prepared for the usual shrug or "I don't know." Instead she considered him for a moment, pondering him and herself he assumed.

Then, finally she answered while picking up her cup again, "It felt right." then she sipped.

It did not satisfy any of his other inner questions. If anything, he was finding himself more confused, with more questions.

-o00o-

'It felt right.' What on earth did that even mean?

-o00o-

He lifted his arm up for the tenth time, trying to elevate it enough to let the sleeves of his jacket fall naturally down his arm enough so he could pull it through and fix it right.

Instead, the wound on his chest, though no longer bleeding, burned with a sudden pain each time he tried to lift it above his shoulder, making him snarl and seethe though his teeth like a hissing Persian.

She heard him, and with a roll of her eyes when he tried to tell her he had it handled, Misty grabbed the sleeve of the jacket, and pulled it over his arm, without making him have to lift his arm and bother his wound.

"Thank you."

She blinked, then answered, "No problem."

-o00o-

After the fourth week, he stopped being light-headed. He could walk, albeit slowly. He still couldn't lift anything heavier than a small pillow. The soft cries and rumbles of his dragons assured him they were nearby, that they were safe and well taken cared of. The housekeeping staff for Misty's mansion were a kind but quiet folk, at least to him. They didn't say much to him, but after the third day he figured it wasn't out of rudeness; they were simply busy.

It was their nonchalant acceptance of his presence, and Misty no longer chaperoning him about that he got to explore the mansion on his own. Along many of the halls and walls were small landscape paintings and luscious scenes of the ocean, the Cerulean Cape, forestry of Viridian and such.

He finally stumbled upon portraits in the second story, medium sized paintings in dark, polished wood that were scattered around every other corner. There were portraits of many old or middle aged men and women, all weary and wrinkled in their bodies but smiling kind and brightly to the viewer.

"Dad had them done." came Misty's voice next to him. He almost jumped, and she came to stand beside him. "This hall is filled with former staff members. He wanted them to be commemorated for being there and helping our family from day one, from poor to rich to poor and back."

"Are they all dead?"

"Nah. The lady right there," she pointed to a wrinkled old woman with a wild curly perm, "she's a school teacher in Lavendar. She broke her hip one too many times working the roofs so Dad let her go. He paid for her trip and a few months of boarding until she was able for herself. That man right over here," next Misty pointed to a heavily tanned man with leathery like skin and crow's feet, "He dreamed of being a botanist for Celadon's gardens, and around his thirty-fourth year Mom recommended him to the big gardening centers there."

He also noticed that many of them had a pokemon with them. The curly permed woman had a sharp-eyed Pidgey on her shoulder. The gardener had an Oddish in his arms.

"Some of their pokemon helped them in their duties, so Mom and Dad though it pertinent to include them in the credit when credit's due, you know?"

-o00o-

He found family portraits on the third and final floor, more people with pokemon beside them. Some had the same carrot orange head of hair as Misty, some had her eyes, or her nose, or her chin.

"Ah, yes, I remember when that one was finished." spoke one of the house staff. Lance jumped, and found the source to be a graying bent-back old man carrying dusters, accompanied by a Bellsprout. It had vines extended from its roots, coiled around dusters that reached the ceiling above and the tops of the paintings that the old man could not.

"Hmm?" Lance replied, pretending not to know which picture the old man thought he had been looking at.

It featured a long line of men and women, some that he had seen in the staff paintings on the lower floors. Close to the center was a middle-aged man in a dark suit with dark hair and oceanic eyes, grinning at the painter while he dominated the left portion of the center. Next to the man in the center and right side of the painting was a young girl in a pale pink dress with carrot orange hair and familiar teal eyes, with a fat Spheal cuddled in her arms. Above her was a woman with the same color hair as the toddler, but dark green eyes instead, wearing a fine red dress with open shoulders, and a rose-themed sash around the waist. Both of the older woman's arms were draped on the man and the toddler. They were framed by the numerous staff members and their pokemon who had assisted in their work at the time of the painting's finish.

"It took a long time for the painter to get the young Miss to stand still long enough for the drafts. But what can you expect for a five year old? All she wanted to do that day was play and show her father the newest trick she and Spheal had discovered. Her mother kept having to change her dress because she kept getting it dirty; they had to postpone the drafting and painting sessions many times for that. But, finally her father was able to convince her to keep clean, and her mother was able to get her to sit still." said the man. "But when they finished it, our matriarch called it the Lady Daisy's finest piece of their family and friends."

Lance decided to assume that the "Daisy" persona was the painter. However, he noted something odd. The Spheal only showed up in two other paintings prior, where the little girl was visibly much younger. But this was the last painting that included it, and all the other paintings that further featured the parents stopped aging while the girl grew up in one or two more paintings into the spitfire gym leader he was currently familiar with.

"It is a shame they had to perish..." the old man sighed.

He stopped talking after that, and Lance left him to continue his work while he pondered the fate that had become of the small Spheal and Misty's parents.

He later pondered as to why he cared in the first place.

-o00o-

On the fifth week he accidentally caught her dancing while he was wandering the mansion. It was nothing scandalous, granted. She had been doing some sort of awkward fusion between a fast shuffle and a waltz, a fusion that neither she nor her partner Golduck were prepared for, nor knew how to manage. Still, as the music playing from the radio filled the air with some fast-paced swing song, the gym leader and her Golduck enjoyed their childish attempt at a dance. Her Staryu was happy to release small balls of starlight into the study where Misty and Golduck took up their dancing space in, while a few of the staff members he noticed followed along either with each other or their own pokemon being their dance partners.

Lance did not like the strange feeling the music tried to give him, and he most definitely did not approve of the feelings that were stirring in his belly as he listened to Misty laugh and smile so brightly and freely for the first time during the duration of his stay so far.

It was to his horror that Golduck tried to throw its trainer into a twirl as it used too much force and sent Misty actually stumbling and spinning right towards the slide doors to the enormous study room; coincidentally, where Lance had stationed himself at.

They didn't fall or tumble, though the impact sent a dull ache through his chest. On instinctive reaction he was able to catch the offending girl who had been thrown at him and keep from falling, but upon the realization of being caught watching, and being caught as the one to save her from a fall, he did the only thing his mind could think to do.

He froze.

"O-oh! Sorry Lance!" Misty apologized, prompting him to realize her from his hands and she pushed herself away from him, "Golduck just got carried away with the beat!"

He didn't reply, too stunned to so much as open his mouth. She had a blush that flushed across her cheeks, her skin glowed from the dancing, and her hair was loose from its usual side-ponytail and framed around her face and curled under around her neck. Despite having been saved from a nasty tumble by her worst enemy, her pupils were still blown wide open from her enjoyment of the dancing and the music, and she was still smiling too.

He definitely one hundred-percent did not like what was warming his insides.

"So... you wanna dance? I'm sure we can find you a partner-"

"I-I don't dance." he stuttered, and in a sudden state of panic he hurriedly excused himself so that he could run far far away from her.

-o00o-

It was the following day that he discovered a most disturbing side effect he hadn't known he even had, that he had no explanation to, and nothing to put the blame on.

A tiny Rattata owned by one of the staff's kids who frequented the grounds had climbed too high on a ledge and gotten scared. He had been passing the same hallway when he saw the Rattata lose its balance and fall. The boy tried to catch it, but Rattata was too heavy and ended up throwing the both of them to the ground in a loud scuffle that nearly knocked over a bookcase. The child had skinned elbows and a knot on the back of his head, but the Rattata retained a lightly sprained forepaw.

"I-is Scout gonna be okay?" the boy asked, as Lance pushed him aside to kneel down by the small purple rat. Lance ignored him in favor of putting his open-palm over the Rattata's paw to focus his gifts and send a pulse of serenity and calm to the chittering, nervous rat and then to send a healing pulse toward the injury.

Rattata calmed, but nothing happened. Lance focused harder, and when nothing happened to heal the sprain in Scout's paw he focused harder until he was actually giving himself a headache. So, he focused even harder on the power dormant inside him gifted upon him from the Viridian Forest, so much that it became hard to breathe and he was beginning to sweat. Instead, his headache became a migraine and still the Rattata remained injured.

"Y-you're scaring me and Scout!" the boy snapped, grabbing up the shy rat pokemon into his arms. He continued, "I'll take him to the Miss, maybe she has a potion!" he told Lance and ran off down the halls, leaving the Dragon Master alone with his thoughts and his migraine.

-o00o-

Dragonite was quick to reply to his panic with his own concerned spike of emotion that immediately helped calm Lance. The Dragonairs and their own voice of concern as well as the emotional spikes from his other pokemon filled his mind and heart, and he could relax.

He could still feel the motions of the pokemon around him when he opened himself up to it, and he could definitely feel the line of influence he had over his dragons. His gift of their hearts was still his, and that was his first worry.

But, he ran through every frame of the moment that passed with the Rattata and his attempt to heal it.

Lance grabbed the nearest object in his path, a small glass cup half-filled with water, and he proceeded to throw it violently against the wall as he realized with a growing horror that something was blocking his power to heal.

-o00o-

To his dismay, Misty noticed his newest change in behavior.

"So what was with you and Joey's Rattata? He said you were being weirder than you usually are." she asked him out of the blue as she placed fresh rolls of bandages near the bedside table for him to take.

"Nothing." he told her blankly, trying to mask his inner despair and panic. Did she know about his powers? Did she know about the loss?

"Liar." she snapped at him.

"Fine!" he snapped back at her, irately, "I was being weird in exactly the way you like to tell me that I am! His Rattata was hurt, I tried to help it, and I failed!" She visibly jumped back, caught surprised by the force and vehemence in his voice.

"Jeez, I'm not asking you to pour your deepest darkest secrets!" she snapped back once she had recovered, "I just asked what happened! You've been acting... I don't know... _uppity_ lately, like something's freaking you out. I want to know why."

He chuffed at her, "So you can lord it over me? No thanks."

"So that I can _help_ , you bonehead." she growled at him and threw one of the bandage rolls at his head, rolling her eyes with exasperation and walking towards the bedroom door, "Not everyone in this freaking region is out to hurt you, and I'd have hoped the last five weeks would have told you that. But nope, back to square one with you!" she snarled on the way out of the room, slamming the door closed and soon her footsteps faded down the hallway. He could still hear her fuming through the walls though.

She wanted to _help_ him? Hardly likely, but he still found himself doubting, as usual, which only served to further the discord inside him. Nobody could help him, not with this. He was sure of that.

...Maybe.

-o00o-

Lance woke up screaming, feeling the ghostly and dizzying overflow of blood down his chest and arms as well as the warm hand that had settled over his collar bone and another on his wrist. There was a worried voice in his ears, telling him over and over again that he was okay, he was safe, nothing was hurting him, he was going to be okay, and he was _safe_.

It took him several seconds to realize that the hand on his wrist was stopping him from further clawing at the bandaged scabs on his chest, where angry red welts were swelling and little droplets of blood around and inside the bandages were forming in tiny needle-thin spots. The dream, or nightmare more accurately, had become as fleeting as it had suddenly appeared in his sleep, and he could remember none of the details.

He was slowly becoming aware that the room was pitch black except for the glow of a night lamp beside him, and more so aware that the one keeping his own hand from betraying him and trying to calm him down from his nightmare was Misty, adorned in a long nightgown, loose pajama pants, and a thin robe. Before he could think or react though, to push her away and snarl at her to leave him alone and stop touching him and stop making him feel things, exhaustion set in as quickly as he had snapped back into the real world. He was unaware of the tears that came loose from his eyes, but he was vaguely aware of Misty's hushed voice whispering to him as he was laid back down.

He was lulled back to sleep with Misty's whispers and her hands drying up the sweat all over his skin with a washcloth, with the belief that either this was just another part of the nightmare, or that this was real but that he would forget it in the morning.

-o00o-

He remembered with a sharp kind of clarity that both dazzled and frightened him, how he could have sworn he had been bleeding rivers out of his chest in his nightmares and awoken to Misty's hands and kind whispers that easily quelled the storm inside him and lulled him back to a dreamless sleep. For hours he stayed in the bed that morning, sitting up with his feet hanging off the bed's edge while his hands cradled his head, thinking back to every moment since waking up that first day and he wondered, angrily, terrified, confused, _When had it changed? When had **he** changed?_

-o00o-

Some indignant, stubborn part of him sparked his inner rage and confusion into an inferno that truly consumed him. By the time it was the dead of night his blood was boiling and rushing in his veins like a river that never stopped that washed everything away. All he thought that night was that it was her fault. It was her fault, that things were changing, that _he_ was changing! It was her fault for showing mercy, her fault for daring to give him her pity, that witch! Her fault, that he couldn't heal anymore! Her fault that this damnable ache in his chest that had surpassed superficial wounds had festered inside him suddenly!

That was all that was going through his mind, over and over like a mantra that was equal parts rage and despair as he snuck into the kitchens of the mansion and then made his way into the upstairs bedrooms. It was so easy because the staff had gotten used to him, and she had gotten complacent with his presence that he was able to shadow into the massive bedroom with its own large personal bathroom, closet space, and a balcony. Once more, his mind whispered, her own fault.

He shoved away the voice in his head that whispered against the hot violence running through his mind as he approached the queen's bed and looked upon the sleeping girl nestled in her covers. Her breathing was steady and rhythmic, her back turned to him and her orange hair spilling behind her shoulders. If his bloodlust and rage had dimmed at all in the course of his ascent through the mansion, it had reinvigorated itself until all he could hear was blood rush in his ears.

Then she mumbled and turned in her sleep and he froze, petrified on the spot. His hands clenched at the carving knife in his grip, the river of rage turning into a monsoon as he stood frozen, that even now she was bewitching him, damn her!

Misty snuggled her hands closer to her face and tried to bury herself deeper into her covers, and he caught the the indescribable, undeniable mumble of his name pass her lips, more unimportant mumblings of ships and carrots.

He fell to his knees with the distinct mind-numbing feeling of defeat that fell into a melting pot of despair and turmoil as his bloodlust, hate, and rage evaporated in an instant. He turned so that his back pressed against the frame and mattresses of her bed, the knife falling from his hands then he angrily kicked it away, finding its presence suddenly and incredibly offensive. It disappeared under a dresser, not that he noticed, as immediately his hands came up to stop the wall of water that threatened to spill over his eyes.

It did not work as streams trickled down his cheeks. He felt a warm hand caress the strands of his hair atop his head, nails just barely touching his scalp as behind him he could hear Misty murmur behind him, "Down boy, good boy...don't eat the mailman."

He should have been offended that she was petting him like he was the dog in her dream.

Instead the tears fell faster and he fought harder to quiet the hiccups in his voice so as not to wake her.

-o00o-

"Lance, what the actual hell!?" she yelled after him.

"I can't stay here any longer, Misty." he tells her simply as he flies out of the outside gardens and into the courtyards, and it wouldn't occur to either trainer until later that he hadn't said her name during his entire stay until that moment. At the center of the courtyard was Dragonite, who looked relatively healthy and healed from their defeat six and a half weeks ago. With a single mental command, the rest of his pokemon who had assembled around Dragonite disappeared into the new set of pokeballs on his belt that he had retrieved from the mansion's supplies an hour ago along with the rest of his things. The only pokemon he was leaving behind, he realized, were the two Dragonairs who had led him there in the first place. The weight of his dragon tamer cape was back on his shoulders, a shadow that reminded him of everything he had done and seen in his life up until that fateful battle atop Mt. Cerise. The black shirt underneath his jacket bearing the Cerulean Gym logo, however, was new and courtesy of Misty's hospitality, thanks to the gaping hole in his old one from Giovanni's Beedrill.

"What do you mean!? Why?! You haven't even fulled healed yet! Where are you even going to go? Where _can_ you go?!" she yells at him, firing off questions that he wasn't sure he could answer, or would want to.

He was feet away from Dragonite, who looked nervous amidst the rampant emotion being broadcast by Misty and Lance himself. He turned to face Misty and found that he looked upon her with a sort of urgency, a need for her to understand so that he wouldn't have to say anything, or have to verbalize the storm that had enraptured his soul. Once he might have looked at her with hate and disgust, but after all that had transpired in the last month and a half there was none.

"I just..." he found, just as he suspected, that he had no idea what to say or how to say what he wanted her to know or understand, as he continued to stumble, "I just c _an't_ , Misty. I just... I need to... I need to find..." he grimaced at himself, at his inability to get anything comprehensible out from the mess in his brain.

Misty frowned at him thoughtfully, almost worriedly, and then he watched her anger deflate in a heavy sigh, "Okay... just promise you won't go off on another genocidal escapade?"

To his credit he didn't find the empty taunt insulting, but he nodded.

He turned away and mounted Dragonite's back, relishing in the familiarity and warmth of his brother in arms. Dragonite sent a pulse of warm emotions to him, which helped ease his nerves.

"If you ever decide to come back to Cerulean, you better be back in one piece, you hear me?" she told him.

He only offered her an upward and quick quirk of his lips that fell as quickly as it appeared when he answered back, "We'll see." Then Dragonite took off into the air with a powerful burst of its wings, and Lance became one with the sky once again.

-o00o-

* * *

And that's the Yellow portion I wanted to get out. Next up will be Gold. No, not the character.

Review and let me know how you liked it, what interested you, or if you have questions or comments.

-KO13


	2. Gold

I'm trying to stretch this because Yellow was over 6k long and this one is, like, HALF that uuugghghbrbrbuh

Once I'm halfway through Crystal, I'll post Silver, and halfway through HG I'll post Crystal, and so forth and so on.

* * *

~•• Gold ••~

Contrarily to what Misty might think, he hadn't gone far. As soon as he had spotted it along the cape, he had Dragonite fly down to the Cerulean Cave. It was impossibly dark inside, and in the few minutes that it had taken for him to get deep inside the caverns, his senses became bombarded. In huge waves he realized he was feeling remnants of heavy emotional aura, the emotions that had belonged to Mewtwo at some point he was sure. The combination of rage and pain that lingered in the cavern became too much for him in the span of a measly hour. He couldn't remember the last time he had allowed himself to be so upset by another's emotions, having shut off their effect on him a long time ago. The sheer force of it unnerved him now. In just roughly an hour of scowling about in the darkness, feeling the remnants of Mewtwo's emotions still lingering even months after it had vacated, and feeling them dig into his skin and make it crawl, he had swiftly turned on his heel and in a few moments was back on Dragonite's back and back in the sky.

-o00o-

He stopped Dragonite along the crests of Mt. Moon when Dragonite began to broadcast exhaustion. It was dark, with only moonlight for him and Dragonite to see with when they landed in a small meadow of moon-flowers nestled safely atop the mountain. He could hear and feel the bustle of Clefairy somewhere around their vicinity, but largely ignored them to tend to the deep soreness that had been persisting for the last few hours. When he looked at the bandages underneath his black shirt, they were cleanly white. Still, the wound ached. He rested against Dragonite's back, who was tired from hours of flying and had flopped onto the ground once Lance gave him the permission to.

Lance put his hand to Dragonite's back, but no healing came from it, only a headache. When he tried to force it, the headache intensified and nothing else.

He eventually gave up when the headache became an unbearable migraine. He would just have to try again tomorrow. His healing powers had to come back soon. They had to.

-o00o-

Lance abruptly woke up with a dry throat and a hoarse voice, Dragonite stirring beneath him. He had dreamed of many things, mostly terrible things. He had dreamed of being pierced again and then twice more by Giovanni's beedrill, of blood rushing out of his body like water from a broken dam. He had dreamed of Giovanni smirking at him as the blood poured, of Agatha with her accusatory glare while her Gengar waited patiently beside, waiting for that last moment of life to come spilling out of him so it could snatch the soul out of him. There had been somebody yelling for him, yelling his name in a note of desperation, but it went ignored as Agatha cackled, her Gengar snickereing and chattering its teeth in hungry anticipation, and a piercing roar burst around him.

He did not sleep for the rest of the night, unable to shake away the nightmares from haunting his awake mind now that there wasn't an infuriating gym leader to soothe them away anymore.

-o00o-

Hunger forced him and Dragonite down Mt. Moon and close to Pewter City on Route 3. It was an easy matter to convince a few rattata to sneak into the city limits and bring back some food, especially with the promise of an equal share. It went off without a hitch thanks to his planning and instructions to the rattata about avoiding police growlithe and pesky store cameras. It was a small hoard to be fair, only two loaves of bread and a bag of apples. Still, it was easy enough to split between himself, Dragonite, and the rattata family. The next day featured a loaf of bread, a bag of apples, and some ears of corn. The next after that, more small assemblages of stolen market foods. After five days of their stolen patronage, he wondered though, if he had just opened the doorway of thievery and burglary to the rattata with their lunch schemes. He allowed himself to wonder if they would go out and continue to steal more from the people and other pokemon of Pewter, and why it bothered him.

He and Dragonite were sky-borne before noon.

-o00o-

Lance spent two more nights atop the crest of Mt. Moon, facing another onslaught of nightmares of bleeding out on Mt. Cerise. This time the dragon pokemon had come to wreak his apocalypse, its screeching roar overcoming even the sound of someone yelling for him and the sound of Agatha accusing him of betrayal with her Gengar waiting so patiently to steal his life energy. He knew out of all of the Elite Four he had gathered, Agatha was the smart cut-throat who would have figured out his plan first.

He still could not heal his pokemon, instead having to continue to allow them the longer road of natural recovery, and he wondered if his lack of healing had come about because of the dragon pokemon and his rejection. Or maybe, his healing was being rejected by something else, by someone of a far more sinister and uncontrollable note. Someone far more unforgivable.

He departed soon after waking.

-o00o-

Just when he thought his inner storm couldn't get any worse, it did as he and Dragonite landed in the heavily shaded foliage below the thick trees of Viridian Forest.

The Viridian Forest felt simultaneously alien and comforting to him, sending mixed signals of chills and warmth into his spine. All a once he felt lost and found at the same time. It was confusing, and utterly lonely, as he camped under the trees and stars for three days. There were few enough people crossing into the forest as it was and none of the pokemon wanted to come near him. No matter how his blood sung with warmth and familiarity at his birthplace and the true source of his gifts, he felt a cold, hard hand of loneliness and disappointment gripping his soul. The forest and its inhabitants both welcomed him as one of its children and spurned him as a monster all at once. A monster, he sensed after days of dwelling under the trees, that had become too consumed by hate for the forest to heal or to forgive. It broke him.

Thinking back to all the years of hating and scheming and spilling blood, and the ultimatum he had gone to war to create, Lance could no longer deny that he was, indeed, a monstrous child. And he had done monstrous things.

-o00o-

He fled, like a terrified child chased by ghosts and monsters, and flew almost halfway across Kanto before he finally stopped. It had taken a few days to quick stop along but eventually Lance came upon route 12's seashore side. It was by accident that he found a seaside shack hosted by some "super fishing guru" fisherman. The man himself was unassuming and probably blindly ignorant to the events of Mt. Cerise and who its players were. He welcomed Lance as a wayward wanderer and was happy to offer a place to stay and warm food to him and all his pokemon.

The kindness of the fisherman reminded him of Misty, albeit with much less yelling and his hair wasn't red, if he did in fact have _any_ hair. It made something ache inside, at this fisherman with nothing but a shanty and a poliwag to accompany himself. His open, generous nature disturbed his inner storm just the same way as Misty did, to where Lance was stuck trying to find some way to reconcile his hatred for humanity's cruelty and this new unveiling truth of humanity's kindness.

He watched with distant interest how the fisherman did his trade. How he used his equipment, and how he treated his catch. Lance noticed within a day that the fisherman released pokemon he caught on his hook; he was, after all, only looking to catch fish, the guru said.

-o00o-

He had felt and heard the familiar emotional auras of her pokemon long before she even came in through the door, so it was no surprise to Lance when the guru had opened the door to another wayward wanderer much like himself, and in walked Lorelei. She looked exhausted of sleep-deprivation and bone tired from something else altogether, but her reaction to him was what had surprised him so. Lorelei whispered his name, and in a few solid steps had him engulfed in an embrace. He didn't know what to do nor how to respond, so he stayed still and let her tighten her hug around him.

Guru laughed about reuniting lovers which he himself scoffed at, but the point that mattered to him was that they both had a place to stay. She let him go eventually. They spoke very little during the day, instead meandering about the guru's house or watching him fish in silence. Late in the night though, when they were sure the guru was deep into his sleep, Lorelei crept close to Lance next to the dim candlelight.

"I haven't seen Bruno or Agatha anywhere. I feared that no one had escaped…" she told him, the guru snoring away from the other side of the shanty.

"Dragonite was able to fly me out. I don't know what's become of Agatha or Bruno either. I've been… laid idle until a month ago." Lance explained stiffly, trying to keep hidden the confusion of feelings over his previous lodgings.

"You were captured?" Lorelei suspected. It would have made sense to assume such a happenstance, as their Elite Four had created many enemies and no allies in their conquest. He might have said yes, remembering the heated words he and Misty had frequently swapped during the first couple of weeks of his stay.

"No," he shook his head, visions, specifically of a gym leader dancing childishly with her golduck or carrying a plate of food and fresh bandages to his side and soothing his night terrors away, whirling about in a whirlwind in his head, "I fell into the care of someone… unexpected."

"You were hurt?" she asked incredulously. It was no easy task, Lorelei must know, to defeat even one of his mighty dragons, and more so to breach them all enough to get so close as to actually touch their trainer.

"The plan to draw Giovanni to Cerise had worked too well. His beedrill pierced here," he tapped on his chest where the wound ached only here and there, "but his badge was ripped from him to the machine and it summoned the dragon, so there was no time to consider it." he explained. She frowned at the carelessness he showed over his state of being, but seemed to decide better to ignore it.

"I never saw what happened. The whole island was coming down so all I could do was to make my escape using Dewgong to ice-slide us out." Lorelei admitted.

"Yellow was able to unleash an attack from her pokemon that made me lose control." he started, briefly envisioning the raw power coursing through his body that had ripped the wound in his chest even wider and deeper than Beedrill had made it, the power that electrocuted and burned through his veins and froze his heart until the pain overwhelmed him into letting go of everything, "I was blasted off the side of Mt. Cerise and Dragonite caught me as I fell. The power of the Legendary pokemon come to bring the elimination of humanity was reverted to Cerise and sprouted new life on its soil instead." he explained.

"I remember seeing all sorts of plants suddenly sprouting as Dewgong waded me out to the water," Lorelei said with a nod of her head. "I'm glad you're okay. I wish I knew how Bruno and Agatha are." she sighed with worry.

Lance shrugged, answering truthfully, "I don't know." Personally, he didn't care much as to Agatha's whereabouts or conditions. The spiteful old hag had been more than capable on her own far before she had begun to round up their little gang, and somehow it wouldn't surprise him to one day find her alive and well purely for the sake of sticking a thorn back into someone's side. Bruno though... Bruno he might could worry over.

"... well, is there a plan?" she asked after a beat

Lance shook his head, "No."

"So this is it? We just give up and go… where? You and Bruno don't have a home, and I've been missing from mine for years." Lorelei snapped.

"I don't know!" he snapped back, just as lost and confused as her, maybe even more so, "But all I know right now is I lost control of Lugia, and now I can't…"

"Can't what?" she demanded.

"...I just can't." he said simply, defeated. There was no other way to describe it, the turmoil that had taken hold of him the moment he fell from Cerise. How could he? He had no words to be able to explain when he himself didn't understand. His birthplace rejected him, and some part of himself deep inside had too. Why, he was stumbling around trying to figure out.

"This has to do with that person who helped you recover from that," Lorelei pointed to the spot where his wound laid, scrutinizing the peek of old bandages he hadn't yet taken off underneath his shirt with the Cerulean Gym logo, and the way he just slightly shied from her pointing, "doesn't it?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe." It was, after-all, only during his stay under Misty's care that he had discovered anything wrong with him.

"...Tell me. About them. About what happened." she demanded in a whisper. He looked at her with a gaze akin to pain, pride, shame, and something shy. The events that had unfolded at the gym leader's mansion were a mundane turn of events, but it was such that had started this whole mess inside him, or at least made him aware of the mess he was becoming. He couldn't quit stop himself from seeing Misty yelling and throwing bandage rolls at him in her rage at exactly the same time as he saw in his head her smiling face as she danced and how she had so carelessly and thoughtlessly asked if he wanted to join the dance. Her scowling at him, her whispering comforting nothings to him to soothe his nightmares, that angry blush when she got very mad and upset, the absolutely peaceful and kind way she whispered his name while she slept and talked in her sleep about dogs and mailmen and carrots. Slapping a bandage on his chest with no care as to how it caused him pain, the firm grip of hands to hold him up as he fell countless times, that gentle caress in his hair.

Something about all that had transpired, he wanted to viciously hide and keep prisoner to himself, so no one could see it, or hear it, or know it. But of all the people he knew, all the Elite Four... he supposed he could trust Lorelei with this.

-o00o-

"You know, our plan made sense when I was angry." Lorelei whispered deeper still into the night, sleep eluding both of them. "Humans hurt pokemon, so at the time, it made sense that we should eliminate the things that were hurting pokemon." He hmph'ed in response, confirming. It had been the singular, ultimate truth that their Four had believed in, had fought for, had literally laid down their lives and spilled blood for.

"But, it doesn't anymore, now that we lost. Now that you've told me about Misty." she admitted, making him suddenly snap his eyes to her form in shock. Lorelei smiled painfully at him.

"Because we can't divide humanity so cleanly into the good and the bad, not really. Humanity is too big, too complicated to try to simplify it down to just two categories. We would have taken the lives of millions that we thought were bad but could have changed, millions that were actually good that just needed to be taught right...We would have so much blood on our hands, and would there even be a real one-hundred percent certainty that the few we saved were really good, or that their children would be good, or their children's children?" Lorelei shook her head, "No… we were wrong, it was just easy to pretend we were right when we were angry."

"Then what? How do we stop the cruelty and pain pokemon face because of humanity?" Lance demanded in a whisper.

Lorelei shrugged, "I don't know. But I know what I need to do now."

"What?"

"I'm going home, back to the Sevii Islands. I need to rethink things… Maybe you need to do that, too." she said.

-o00o-

He did not sleep the rest of the night after their talk. The following morning Lorelei left without a word, disappearing into the ocean waves aboard her Lapras. That night, Lance dreamt of her, standing beside Agatha and her hungry Gengar, looking at him with open horror and hurt, crying when she too figured out his plan. Lugia screeched above them, directing its destructive power down into what would be ground zero of humanity's complete annihilation. He heard Misty shouting in the distance, but she would be too late and too weak to stop the reckoning. He awoke in the middle of the night, sweating and cold. He woke Dragonite up, left a thank you note for the guru to find in the morning, and flew into the night.

Lorelei was right, she was so very right, even if neither of them knew what to do anymore. Humanity couldn't be simplified into just one part red, one part green, because humanity was too many shades and hues and sheens all at once.

-o00o-

It was with much hesitance that Lance returned to Cerulean City. He made absolute sure to keep himself hidden, content to stay within the shadows and watch this time. He watched the city people go about their daily lives, watched a few crooks and their pokemon make mischief. He watched the city's police force and Misty herself show up, bringing swift justice down on the thieves. She had a marvelous, captivating sort of righteous fury in her eyes as she completely washed them away with fiery words and an equally fiery team. He was seeing himself in flashes then, brief visions of himself caught in a fire of his own unique righteous rage as she brought justice and retribution.

But, then she won the battle. The crooks surrendered, and she left them to the police, absolutely satisfied with capturing and apprehending them and no more. He would not have been so satisfied, he realized. He wouldn't have been settled with retribution, but with revenge. There was a different note between them, he knew, he just didn't understand what. Watching her deal with the thieves, though, gave him an inkling.

He watched her for another day, staying within shadows and just out sight. Misty won a few battles, lost a couple, and played and trained alongside her pokemon when they rested between battles. When she closed the gym around midday, he followed her on her walk to the Cerulean Cape. There, two familiar Dragonairs burst out of the surf and greeted her cheerfully. It was difficult to mask his presence from his own pokemon, but he managed as he watched.

The dragonair twins were enthusiastic in their flight around Misty, eager to win shares of her affection with nudges of their snouts against her face and body. Misty was happy to return the gestures with fond caresses along their faces, behind the wings of their heads, and right under their jaws. His jaw nearly dropped. His stoic, cold, powerful dragons, two of the strongest really, were vying for her attention like tiny Meowth kittens. It made him angry all at the same time that it made him feel utterly ashamed; there had been a time where all of his pokemon had been that carefree and joyful, and it was a very long time ago. His vendetta, it seemed, had taken from his own pokemon too.

Misty released her own pokemon to let them play together for a while. The twins participated with much gusto, pleased with the company. When the sun began to set Misty gave her goodbyes to the dragonairs and returned home. It was only then that he approached, finally, unmasked, and the dragonair twins drifted up to meet him. They asked questions, of where he had gone, what he had been doing, had he seen them with Misty and was he angry, was he staying, was he going, would they come with him?

 _No, I want you two to stay here._ he told them through their bond, _There are things I have to find, things I've been made to consider…. I want you two to look out for each other, and… I want you two to stay and protect her_.

It was time, he decided, to leave behind Kanto.

-o00o-

Blackthorn was out of the question. He had burned that bridge years ago with no intention of going back after Agatha came along to recruit him, and even now was determined to avoid it. He knew there would be no welcome for him anyway, no warm smiles or open arms for him. Once they knew the truth, the cold fear, maybe even hate, would fill the eyes of his former family.

From his point of view, he was simply cutting out unnecessary pain. Besides, there was the matter of his failing powers, and this...war inside him that needed to be addressed and solved.

Perhaps after….

Perhaps…. _never_ ….

It was many years ago, Lance realized, when he had made the journey through Mt. Silver to leave behind his family and friends to cross into Kanto. It was just as cold and unforgiving as he remembered, perhaps more so he considered as the wind cut through him as sharply as the cold and ice did. He dared not bring out any of his pokemon in the blizzards, the cold would surely cut them down in a matter of minutes. Instead, he wandered through the trees and rocks through snow and ice, hunched over and shivering through his clothes that had been wrapped and pinned closer and thicker to his body to conserve heat.

Few pokemon approached him during the blizzards and harsher snow fall. A few ice pokemon that paid him no mind, an Ursaring that warned him about coming near it and its Teddiursa offspring with a few growls. When the white blinding him became too much, Lance took shelter under a large, spacious rock formation underneath some evergreens. It curved out inside making the entrance small and limiting the weather from getting inside, and the inside was large enough to comfortably fit him and several others. Dragonite jumped at the chance out of its pokeball to curl around him and use its body heat to warm the otherwise freezing boy.

A Larvitar had wandered in when Lance had dozed. He jolted awake at its cry of alarm when it realized it was not the only one taking shelter. Sending a calming emotional aura to it was all he needed to calm it down, and soft-spoken thoughts to inform it that they could share. After some more hours inside, it looked like the blizzard had calmed down to a thin flurry of snow. Returning Dragonite, he steeled himself onward, decisively ignoring the fact that the Larvitar was following him.

He had decided, before the snow and hail that he would have to go back. Johto was, afterall, the origins of the first legends surrounding Lugia. Between pride and a streak of stubborness that spurred him on through the snow, he had decided he would give chase to Lugia. Perhaps he'd find it again, and be able to find out why he had lost control of it, and himself. Perhaps he'd find something utterly different. Whatever it took for this inner turmoil to settle, it didn't matter.

Bearing years of his hatred on one shoulder and months of others' kindness on the other shoulder, Lance endured the snow and hail of Mt. Silver, and then the rain and darkness of Tohjo Falls, and eventually stepped into the welcoming sunshine of Newbark Town, a Larvitar contentedly walking beside him.

-o00o- -o00o- -o00o- -o00o- -o00o- -o00o- -o00o-

* * *

And that's how he gets his eventual-Tyranitar.

Review and let me know how you liked it, what interested you, or if you have questions or comments! Thanks for reading!

-KO13


	3. Silver

Copying from Lost Mermaid so everyone gets to hear this...I don't know for sure who of you are readers in the United States, but I'm sure that all of you have heard the news about the new president-elect of America. I know that a lot of us are scared right now. We don't know what the next four years will have in store for America, or what's to come for those of us that are going to be deeply and personally affected by not just the new elect, but also by the people who have supported him who feel empowered by him. A lot of you are scared and you have every right to be. You have every valid right and reason to feel what you do about the results of this crazed rodeo of an election and what this could mean for the country and its people, and the world. I'm not going to pretend I'm any sort of expert to seek advice from on what can be done, or that I know any of you personally enough to assume about any of you individually, but I want to take this moment, this snippet of the update to-I guess express is the right word-what I want to say to all of you.

Every one of you have given me nothing but kind words and I couldn't possibly thank you enough for the positivity and patience. In the next four years, some of us are going to be deeply affected by the new president of our country. Please, continue to spread your words of kindness. To everyone. Be the best person that you can be, and if you cannot, if you falter, or get angry, or scared, that's okay. It's normal and okay that we cannot be perfect or the best 100% all the time without fail. But try to be good to each other. I firmly believe that all of you, just by the few or numerous words you've sent me in reviews and PMs are enough to show me that all of you are wonderful, incredible people with powerful words that surely can help those who are in need and are going to be in need of some good, honest kindness. I don't know what the future holds for any of us, but while we can, and while we are here, please. Be kind. Be good. Reach out with love and kindness to others who need it, and reach for love and kindness when you yourself need it. Take care of yourself, and please take care of each other.

That said, I'd like to thank all of you again for your outstanding patience. This year has been one hell of a rollercoaster for all of us, I'm sure, and I've been neglectful of writing because of my own fair share of twists and turns. Mid December I'll be out for winter break from school, but Spring is going to mark what I'm pretty sure (and hoping for) is going to be my last two semesters of college. They are also going to be the hardest and longest I've ever faced, I'm sure. I must once again ask for your patience with me, but please continue to believe that I'm not giving up.

I love how Yellow was over 6k of words, I struggled with Gold to make it even 4, but Silver, oh lord no, I can't even begin to keep it _under_ 6k.

Silver is going to be our lovely little johto homecoming chapter (has avoidance issues, gets tossed around a lot, housewives are godsends) Lance is at this time 14-15

* * *

~•• Silver ••~

-o00o-

Kanto had still been in a tizzy, reeling from the sudden invasions of dragons and ghosts that gym leaders tried valiantly to fight off. He had been careful to fly high up in the clouds to avoid detection and unwanted attention, but in Johto, everything was quiet. Separated by a mountain range that posed a proverbial stand of judgement against daring trainers, it wasn't so surprising.

The quiet and gentle warmth radiating in Newbark was unsettling after months of keeping on his toes.

Though… part of that could be because of the neighbors. He distinctly felt like he was stepping on glass barefoot around Professor Elm. Not because the kind, amicable professor was scary in any sort of fashion, Mew no! The Larvitar at his feet crowing for food was more terrifying than him! No, it was because Elm was most likely a frequent contact of Professor Oak, and more than not Lance would rather try to solve his own inward problems without Oak's color-coded hounds chasing his tail.

Then there was that kid, Gold, and his mother's house-full of baby pokemon. Lance could appreciate his enthusiasm for the hatchlings, but the boy's attitude was less than appealing. He was cocky, reckless, and Lance was more than not tempted to have Dragonite just Hyper beam him out of his way after getting pranked with a bucket of water once.

-o00o-

Okay, fine. _Fine_.

Twice.

-o00o-

Violet City, naturally, made him feel like hawk eyes were on his every move. That could, of course, be attributed to just the general hawk-like appearance of its gym leader, Walker, and his son-slash-successor Falkner. Or, it could simply be the unrelenting presence of those damnable nightmares weighing him down, as usual. Or that right before the night he had decided to leave Newbark, that twerp Gold _somehow_ managed to squeeze in one last bucket of water prank. Or that he was pretty sure he was being followed by a red-haired boy.

He could start a grocery list of reasons, at this rate.

-o00o-

Oh for the love of-!

...

...

He was utterly lost in Ilex.

-o00o-

There was a small shrine in the heart of the forest. It was comprised of aged white wood with a small compartment for offerings. Lance, admittably, could not get the same intimate connection with Ilex as he had with Viridian, but there was something at the edge of his senses. A light, tickling effect like the tip of a feather brushed against his skin. The forest was peaceful to listen to though. As though the forest sensed he needed a moment of tranquility to steady himself, after months of being on edge. It was... it was nice, after being rejected by Viridian Forest...

-o00o-

Whatever he had expected to find in Ilex... it was not Bruno.

And if it _had_ included Bruno... it would never have included _this_ Bruno.

"I... I remember meeting you, and... Lorelei? And Agatha...but I don't remember anything after that." Bruno admitted to him, after the sixth or seventh time Lance had asked him to clarify what he meant when Bruno said he didn't remember the past year and a half and wanted to know what had happened since they first met.

"Nothing? Not, the plan, not fighting Red, not Cerise, _nothing_?!" he almost demanded incredulously. How? How could Bruno _not_ remember that long year of training and scheming and fighting?

"I have no idea what you're talking about, man." Bruno shrugged. "All I know is that one moment, I'm going to sleep to think over Agatha asking us to join yours and hers little training entourage. Next thing, I'm waking up on a collapsing island, hauling ass with a deadweight ninja on my back to get out, and a pounding headache."

...okay, Lance considered, fair point. But still, how? How could he not remember? Had he hit his head during his battle with Bill and the Lieutenant?

Bruno made a sudden huff, and when Lance brought his attention back to the muscular man, he found Bruno with his hand out toward him. In his hand were a pair of wrist bands, similar to the studded pair currently around his wrists.

"Oh, and I was wearing these pointless things." Lance inspected them for curtsy's sake, picking them up and turning them about in his hand before placing it back into Bruno's palm, but he was still confounded.

"Are they not the same as the ones you're wearing?" Lance asked.

Bruno shook his head, "Mine are weighted." he said, slipping one off and handing it to Lance to feel for himself. He nearly gasped once he had it in his hand and Bruno let go. Damn things were five pounds of dead weight! Lance quickly returned the band, now even more confused.

"It's not just that they're useless to wear, they... they feel funny." Bruno admitted, "Like a ghost is right behind me, if I go to put them on."

"A ghost?" Lance repeated, while Bruno nodded. He passed the weightless band back to Lance again, who once again inspected it in his hand. This time, however, Lance focused in on his own mind, the emotions in his heart as he inspected the black leather and metal studs. He turned it about, and then pulled it close to his other hand to begin putting it on.

It hadn't touched the skin of his other hand, the shadow of the leather having only barely crossed a few centimeters over his fingers before he was violently ripping it away. The shadow that had begun to pass through his spine and sink its poison-tipped claws into his mind and his heart with silver tongued whispers had him throwing the wristband at the ground and jumping away from it like it had burned him. A ghost indeed.

A ghost... a _ghost_.

"Bruno... I'm sorry." Lance said, genuinely, truly. He knew they had done some questionable things for the sake of their goal, gone to lengths they shouldn't have, but this, oh Mew, _this_. _Agatha had done this to him_. _Agatha had done that to Bruno for an entire year._

"For what?" he questioned.

"I..." What could he say? "I'm sorry. I don't... I don't know how to help you." Lance admitted.

Later that evening, under the light of a crackling fire and the shadows of Ilex forest, Lance cracked and told Bruno the truth. At least, some of what he knew. Perhaps it wasn't fair, to leave out the true depths to which their Elite Four had sunk to for their master plan. Perhaps even cowardly. But, for Bruno, it was enough to know that some bad things had been done by them.

It was later that evening that Lance found the aforementioned "deadweight ninja". Non-surprisingly, it was Koga. Surprisingly, Koga had decided to stick around with Bruno.

Naturally, it took a near death experience with each other's pokemon and Bruno pulling them apart into timeout for Koga and Lance to be able to sit down together around the campfire and be civil with each other. The much older ninja of the now disbanded Team Rocket was distrustful of Lance, with a glint of bloodlust in his eye, and frankly Lance couldn't blame him for it.

The wrist bands were burned in that campfire.

Lance did not sleep that night. In fact, he opted to let Aerodactyl fly him out of the forest in the middle of the night while Bruno snored and Koga pretended he was asleep.

-o00o-

For three days and three nights, he barely caught sleep underneath the shadows and dust of the ruins between Violet City and Azalea Town. For three days and three nights, all of his pokemon repeated, over and over, in a repetitive chorus of voices, that his influence of their minds and their hearts was nothing, _absolutely nothing_ like the horrible injustice Agatha had done to Bruno. Over and over again, his dragons told him that they loved him, they respected him, because he gave the same love and respect to them. They told him that they had never been forced to do all that he had ever commanded, that they knew he had only ever flexed his powers over them because he cared and believed so deeply in his cause, in the same cause they themselves had believed in too. They told him he had never hurt them, or forced them against their will.

But he couldn't stop remembering the ghastly poisonous claws sinking into his soul from the wristbands, or Bruno's admission to his memory loss. He couldn't stop wondering, just how much of all that Bruno had done was ever really Bruno and how much was Agatha. No matter the insistence, no matter the crashing waves upon waves of comforting emotion his dragons sent him, Lance just... he just couldn't forgive himself this sin, this one sin among a multitude of others that he had been waking up to. Not this quickly. Not this easily.

-o00o-

Ecruteak was... alright.

By alright, he could say boring, really. And disappointing. He found nothing to clue into his inner turmoil, even as he stood within the very confines of the Burned Tower where legend once claimed was Lugia's roost. The Bell Tower was even more useless. Just empty space, a few annoying preachy monks, and the suspicious eyes of the gym leader, Morty.

Whatever, he could care less about what the ghost-specialist thought; he had in fact had more than enough of ghost-specialist trainers to last him for quite a while now. All he had found in Ecruteak was more disappoint, and more nightmares. One of the elder ladies who had accepted him into her home for the night mentioned a pharmacy in Cianwood City that could have medicine for them. It was something to consider, as the nightmares never failed to manifest in his sleep if not every night, then every other night. It was exhausting.

If he could go at least three days without feeling his chest rip open and hearing Misty's voice distantly screaming something in his dreams, Lance would dare to say he would never again ask the cosmic powers that be for anything else, ever.

-o00o-

Olivine City, in comparison to Ecruteak though, was much more eventful. The port city was much more lively and bustling with ships coming and going, boisterous sailors at every block of the city, and the rumors of the construction project northwest of the city had the city-folk alight. In the span of one day, he had gotten several battling propositions, one waitress's personal phone number-a fact that still baffled him, why on earth would anyone give out their personal number to complete strangers?-and an earful of old legends about Lugia by an elderly lady whose son was a sailor... there was one other thing...

Oh, right!

He finally got a proper look at the red-haired boy who had been tailing him since he came to Johto. And learned a small clue about Lugia and why he had lost control of it. Also, there was the small bit of having made the boy-Silver-his new part-time errand boy.

It had been a busy day.

-o00o-

Days later, a storm ravaged the entire west coast of Johto. Lance awoke from a restless nap, shooting to his feet, as an emotional aura struck him somewhere, distantly, so very faintly and yet absolutely striking. An aura he had only felt on Mt. Cerise, and it couldn't possibly-and yet it was!

Stupidly, foolishly, Lance sprinted out of his lovely but terribly temporary abode in the woods near Olivine and leaped onto Dragonite's back into the rain and dark clouds above them. Through the pelting rain and powerful winds they flew, directionless for what seemed like hours. They had sailed over Olivine City's lighthouse long ago, but through the storm around them he was finally picking up again on the emotional signature of his target, finally picking up a direction.

The seawater was in chaos. The waves were towering, the water clawing for him and Dragonite even high above as they were, and the wind battering them about. The signature got stronger, equal parts fury and cold indifference the further out they went. The wind cycled in spiraling swirls, and below them the waters churned into chaotic whirlpools.

Through the dark clouds, rainfall, and flashing of thunder, Lance saw the illumination of islands deep in the heart of the storm wrecking the Johto seas. He cautioned Dragonite further, closer to the islands through the battering rain and wind. He was so entrenched in his focus of the emotional aura before them that he never saw the attack coming. Blasts of powerful energy and slicing wind slammed into Dragonite and Lance. Dragon tamer and dragon alike plummeted to the waters below, stunned by the surprise attack.

Lance's fall forced him to sink a good thirteen feet below the churning water surface. He urged Dragonite in his mind's eye to return to safety while he attempted, and fumbled, to release Gyarados while he held his breath as best as he could as the current flipped him around in the water. Then, through the chaotic currents and darkness of the clouded waters, Lance froze under the gaze of glowing blue eyes-

 ** _-HATEPAINLIARMURDERERTORTURERDEATHSEEKERDEATHSEEKERTHEMASKDEATHSEEKERTHEMASKISSEARCHINGDEATHSEEKER_ ** the words slammed into his mind.

Through the rolling roar of the water filling his ears, Lance was assaulted by a different, thunderous roar that furiously vibrated the water, and shook him to his core. A burning rage and icy pain crippled his senses in addition to the deafening roar in his ears, and he involuntary opened his mouth to scream. Seawater flooded his mouth and his lungs, while the water currents continued to toss him around like a lifeless rag doll. He couldn't breathe, couldn't fight, couldn't think through the fury of panic and pain and the deafening roar of water and Lugia to reach out for his pokemon.

Something grabbed him in its jaws, large teeth scratching against his clothes and skin, and instead of water all around him suddenly Lance was above the surface, being pelted by rain, and throwing up seawater. The glowing blue furious eyes of Lugia followed him as his new captor pulled him higher out of the water and fled. The fluttering of panic and worry that churned in his body, he realized, was not just his own, and when at last Lance could stop coughing and gagging up sea water he caught glimpses of blue and gold scales. Gyarados, he supposed, carrying him away in its maw.

-o00o-

When he awoke abruptly from a nightmare full of screams-all kinds of screams, deep rumbling screaming, thunderous screams, high pitched human screams-Lance saw a ceiling over him as he sat up immediately, filling his vision with bed sheets, a futon, and a sparse room. For a moment, he thought he was back in Cerulean City, and that the past two months had been a horrific dream. For a single moment, he fully expected to see the red-haired harpy herself in all her righteous, furious, confusing, kind, smiling glory. When his vision cleared, however, he realized that the sheets and pillow smelled nothing like honey, lemon, and saltwater pools. There were no picture frames of her or her family adorning the walls, no messy manner of clothes or belongings flung carelessly across the floor...

The room he was in was very tidy, with a small dresser, a short bedside table, a window, wood floors and wall frames, and a paper-wood slide door. His cape and clothes were folded neatly atop the bedside table, and his pokeballs were laid on top of the material, however one of them was empty. He pulled himself out of the futon, taking a quick but meaningless note of the wide-hipped grey sweatpants adorning his hips and the plain white gi tunic with a cyan logo over his upper body before pulling both articles of clothing off to replace them with his own.

Cape, pants, pokeballs, and the black t-shirt with the Cerulean City Gym logo back on, completely void of seawater, Lance slide the paper door aside and began the search for his missing pokemon and his newest would-be hosts. It did not take long for him to find one occupant, an older woman in her thirties with dark brown hair pulled back in a bun and wearing casual robes. She was in a kitchen area with two Tyrogue's bustling about, assisting her in cooking. One of them perked curiously at him, and grabbed the woman's attention by barking at her softly.

She turned, first to the Tyrogue, and then to Lance, pleasant surprise in her expression, "Oh, good, you woke up! You'd been out of it all night and half the day! You must have had quite the tumble out in that storm last night, young man." she said easily.

"You could say that." he answered, flashes of Lugia's fury unleashed upon him snapping about in his head.

"Well, your timing is actually pretty impeccable. Lunch should be done in juuuust a few more minutes." she said.

"I'm missing a pokemon." he stated curtly, clearly for an explanation.

The woman nodded, unaffected by his brittleness, "Your Gyarados. Toughest looking catfish I've seen in a while, if it managed to drag you out of whatever mess you got into in that storm. It's probably waiting for you in the gym...oh! How rude of me!" she gasped, "My name is Nanako. My husband, Chuck, and I found you and Gyarados washed up ashore."

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Our house, Cianwood City Gym."

-o00o-

While the boarding he found himself in was nothing like the hospitality he had been in back in Cerulean, Lance found himself once again in the hospitality of a very loud, boisterous host. While Chuck had little to no temper to match Misty, he was every bit as loud as her, just in a few different ways. Lance could hear the man coming almost a mile away by noise and stomping feet-quakes alone, in addition to his booming voice. He was almost obnoxious, and a stark contrast from his wife Nanako, who was much quieter and gentler in her presence.

Their house was situated smack on top of the gym, which also meant he could hear Chuck and his pokemon, equally loud sort, busting moves and mowing challengers down. Once he had found Gyarados and ensured himself of its health and wellness, Lance ended up retreating back into the spare room he had first woken up to, in a very vain attempt to escape the sheer booming presence of his host, as well as to think about his encounter at sea.

-o00o-

The words, and the feelings burning inside them, echoed in his mind in his usual bout of nightmares. They screeched painfully into his ear while his chest was ripped asunder by Yellow's Pikachu and Agatha cackled at him, calling him a traitor and a fool for thinking he could get away with his plan, and then there was Misty's distant damnable screaming.

The second time, Lance was abruptly awakened just a few minutes before the break of dawn where the world wasn't quite lit and wasn't quite dark. Over his futon, stood Chuck who looked grim and determined.

"You have those nightmares frequently?" he asked, to which Lance slowly nodded, wiping away the sweat from his brow line. Chuck surprised him by nodding his head toward Lance's clothes folded at the foot of his futon, "Rinse off the sweat, and meet me downstairs."

Chuck then left the room swiftly, leaving Lance little time to ask for clarification on the mysterious demand. Once the sweat of the nightmares was scrubbed off his skin and hair and he was properly dressed, Lance found the stairs leading down into Chuck's gym. The gym was devoid of activity other than a Tyrogue preparing equipment for the day, and a Hitmontop marking the borders of an arena. Chuck met him at the dojo doors, motioning for him to follow.

Outside, dawn was beginning to break over the sea's horizon. Lance followed Chuck outside and around the back of the gym to an unmarked trail that divulged into a small forest. After a short walk, they came upon the edge of the forest greeting a small pool of water and thick slabs of rock breaking the flow of a waterfall. They circled around onto the rocks until they were just about to touch the waterfall. There were a few feet of rock they could walk on that would put them directly behind the waterfall itself, which Chuck ducked behind and gestured for him to join.

"My morning meditation ritual. It gets me away from the city for a while, away from the gym, people, so I can connect with myself and consider things around me." Chuck explained, as he then stepped into the flow of the waterfall, water cascading over and down him. Then, Chuck settled down on the rock with his legs crossed and straightening his back so that he was sitting in a meditative position. Through the flow of water he pat the space of rock a foot or two away from him, gesturing for Lance to take.

Deciding to humor him, Lance followed suit, diving into the current and sitting down criss-crossed on the rock. The water constantly drummed along his whole body, save for his face that could stick out to allow him to breathe. He barely heard Chuck's instruction to count his inhale and exhale, to steady his breathing and work on clearing his mind through the drum and flow of water drowning his hearing.

It wasn't easy. He grew frustrated very quickly, his mind doing the exact opposite of clearing itself of haunting screams and words, of how flat and hard the rock was underneath him and how foolish he felt letting himself get soaked to the bone.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump, to which he found Chuck leaning out of the waterfall to speak to him.

"Can't get everything on a first try, boy."

Lance would have disagreed. His whole life had revolved around one-try-only success in nearly everything he did. Everything was done, and with purpose.

Until Mt. Cerise, a nasty little thought wormed into his mind. Frustrated, and feeling foolish, Lance snarled at the older man, "No, this is just ridiculous." and he pulled himself out of the waterfall current.

-o00o-

Chuck approached him two more times that day, offering to attempt some more meditation under the waterfall. Lance rebuked him both times, refusing to feel any more foolish than he already had that day, though he silently offered to help around the gym and the house.

"I had a student from Kanto," Chuck began as a story over dinner, plain rice and some kind of spicy fish meal, "he'd be around yer age right now. Stubborn lil brat for the first few weeks under my watch. Arrogant, careless, and quite a mouth on him." an amused grin pulled at his lips to show off a mouthful of teeth, "It was quite fun to pull the rug out from his feet, the lil shi-"

Nanako cuffed the back of Chuck's head with her hand swiftly before he could finish the word.

"Well, after being a little brat, and getting his butt handed to him by one of my usual students, he got humbled and homesick. So, I had him tell me about his home while we trained. It didn't cure his homesickness, but it gave him comfort to spill about... and then it became his determination to succeed. He wanted to excel so as to make his family back in Kanto proud."

The next morning, he was shaken awake from his nightmares again, this time by Nanako and a Tyrogue. She had a tall pitcher of water and small hand towels for him to drink and dry the sweat off.

"Would it help, do you think, if you told someone what you see in your sleep?" Nanako asked him.

"I... I don't know." he answered earnestly, "But who could I tell? The things I see... the things I've _done_..." To tell Nanako and Chuck his sins would only force him back into the skies, and after the encounter at sea Lance found himself anxious to return. Would Lugia be ready to greet him once more, to drown him in the waters it ruled?

"In my experience, running from personal ghosts has never worked well for anyone's favor. Until you accept them as real, you'll be running for the rest of your life until it finally kills you." Nanako offered, her words resonating the face of a woman who despite her kind and gentle demeanor, had faced a humbling truth and a hard road to pave.

"What do you know of ghosts?" he snapped, "What do you know of believing something is right, and doing unspeakable things to achieve it, only to fall short and find that everything, _everything_ you had thought and believed in, all that you had fought so hard for, was so wrong!?" He spat, and waited. Waited for the snap-back, the reactionary temper to flare, to see this gentle woman become a spitting Arbok.

"I know what it's like to lose the people you love. And to think that the loss of them was yours to take the blame for." she said back, not at all angrily, just coolly and a little bit sad, "I've seen Chuck take in numerous students, all of whom I've been blessed to know as deeply as my husband who trained them. Some were average kids from normal families who just wanted to learn something new and exciting. Some were children from broken homes, or homes in the middle of shattering. Some had survived a painful past, some were going through it. Some were even passed over to us by the system, because they had robbed or cheated or hurt someone and what a better way to discipline a criminal than to put them through grueling training with my husband on an island town far away from the cities?"

It's not the same, he scoffed, none of it could be comparable to his sins, or the turmoil boiling inside him, no one could possibly suffer the pain of being torn apart by his own heart the way he did.

And yet...

"So... who's this girl you keep murmuring about? This Misty girl?" Nanako asked, abruptly changing gears. Lance audibly groaned. Why does everyone keep wanting to talk about her?

"Because she's clearly important in your nightmares, and important to you." Nanako chuckled. He jumped, confused and bewildered as to why she was answering his thoughts. It occurred to his utter shame then, as he began to blush furiously, that he had spoken aloud.

-o00o-

Two days. Two days of Nanako teasing and nudging him for the details about Misty (temperamental, loud, kind Misty), and watching Chuck and his students train in their rigorous regimes of martial arts, with minimal help around their house passed by.

Finally, on the third break of dawn, Lance walked the path Chuck had taken him, behind the gym, through the forest, up into the cliffs and into the waterfalls. Chuck was already there, humming for his meditation. His boot kicked a rock that skittered loudly about, catching Chuck's attention briefly. Lance's stern look told the master and gym leader to refrain from speaking. Chuck didn't say a word, merely smiled at him and patted the space of rock and rushing water next to him.

From the crown of his head to the seat of his spine and pooling around his crossed legs, the water rushed down him, through him. A constant, strong drumming of current, powerful and steady, but never obstructing. He thought he could hear Chuck speaking to him, advising him and guiding him through the process. Lance could barely hear him, if he was in fact hearing him at all.

-o00o-

A calculated breathe, in and out. Flashes of his nightmares rose unbidden to the forefront of his mind, all screams and splattering blood and unimaginable power ripping him apart-in, and out. Pain, striking at his chest, a surgance of fire and ice and lightning making his heart feel like it was exploding and freezing all at once-in and out.

They rushed at him, unbidden and poisonous-in and out-screams of betrayal, screams of horror and desperation, screams of the scion of death itself in his ears-

They rushed at him, and then with a shuddering breathe, in and out, each flowed with the current rushing down his back, to his legs, to his feet, to the rock and away.

They came back, seething vengeance and hate-

-and they flowed down and out, a cycle of rise and fall that grew further and further apart with each repetition.

"If you'd like," Chuck began, pulling Lance out of his trance an out of the current, "I could train you."

"I... appreciate the offer, but I'm quite capable with my pokemon-"

Chuck scoffed, "No, not that kind of training." Lance offered his confusion as a gesture to continue and elaborate, which Chuck took, "I mean train _you_. In martial arts."

-o00o-

With pokemon battling, he had the gift of reading into both his own and his opponents pokemon. By leaving the channel in his mind open, the simplest and smallest inkling of a feeling was enough in the heat of battle, knowing where, how, and when the opponent was moving, what each attack was going to feel like before it was even put to action. It gave him a very gracious advantage, this emotion-based foresight, in addition to his natural talent for command and strategy that had never failed him before. However, people were not pokemon. He couldn't read their thoughts, or their hearts the way he could pokemon. Body language was the closest he could come to reading them, and it was only as safe as the person broadcasting it was doing so unknowingly or recklessly.

He had to remember that for every falter and mistake that occurred on the mats.

Especially since in just the span of two days of starting training with Chuck, he had been knocked onto his back at least ninety-five times, bruised parts of his arms, legs, and torso, almost sprained his wrist, and a broken-but-reset nose.

-o00o-

Lance lost track of time. His mornings for the first week or so into training were spent helping Nanako around the house, joining Chuck in meditation at the falls, battling with the other students in one-on-one pokemon battles with his team, getting the dojo floor wiped with his own body-and especially by the hands of one student in particular, a younger boy with a Violet City accent named Lao-and then licking his wounds and going back to sleep to start it all over again.

Along the second week, he diverted from the path to the falls, and he found himself at a small cliff allowing him to see the city and dawn breaking across the horizon, painting the sea gold and ruffling his hair and cape with a salty breeze. After that, he stopped following the path to the falls and instead meditated on the cliff edge. Dragonite or Aerodactyl occasionally joined him, sunbathing in the rays of dawn.

-o00o-

Some days meditation was easy. Like pushing a piece of paper off of a desk.

Some days... some days it was like he was drowning in the seas all over again, trying to claw his way out of the mess in his head.

-o00o-

"Can you _please_ talk to your wife about harping me about my nightmare-induced nonsensical mumblings?" Lance asked of him in the midst of an exercise in reaction. It was a simple one; knock away a punch or chop from Chuck, throw one of your own, get blocked by Chuck, block his retaliating punch or chop, rinse and repeat. Except it was fast. Wicked fast. The exercise only stopped when one of them tired, or when one of them hit the other.

"About your nightmares? Or about the girl?" Chuck inquired to clarify. His wife was, for all her gentle and kind demeanor, quite pushy and nosy.

"Both." Lance answered, nearly jumping when Chuck shoved not one but _three_ consecutive punches his way. To his pleasure, he blocked all of them. Too bad Chuck blocked all of his own.

"One thing you need to know about women, kiddo. They do as they please, and there's no making them do otherwise." Chuck said with a chuckle. Lance scoffed at the not-so-new news. He had learned that one quite well after spending a month under Misty's hospitality, and before that in the Elite Four with Agatha and Lorelei.

"On that note, 'm pretty curious myself about this girl you keep moaning about."

Lance groaned with suffering.

Said suffering groan cost him a precious instant in which Chuck knocked him flat on his butt.

-o00o-

Three months swept past him without any regard of notice. His healing still refused to return. The nightmares persisted, with only a reprise of a newfound capability to pull himself out of the dream to soften the blow thanks to the work of meditation.

-o00o-

The words, the accusations Lugia had roared into his mind, battering and bruising permanent knooks for the words to hang themselves up so nicely in his mind for him to always see and hear... he wondered...

...if he was the Death-Seeker... then who was The Mask? Who was The Mask, the one that was Searching? Why did the Guardian of the Sea and Harbinger of the Storm, who so furiously lashed out at him, deem it fit to tell him about this Mask?

-o00o-

Kirk, some lone man that owned a Shuckle, was assaulted and robbed. Lance was present when the bespectacled and greasy-haired man came before Chuck, shaking and pale, begging the gym leader to help him get his pokemon back. Chuck promised to do what he could.

Having seen the crooks in the act, Lance was more than happy to hunt them down for terrorizing and spiriting away a pokemon instead of waiting.

-o00o-

The two men who attacked Kirk were, as he suspected, utterly pathetic in a pokemon battle. In a mere smack from Dragonite's claws, the one Raticate they had between them was swatted down and out for the count. The Shuckle they stole was still nestled safe and soundly in its pokeball, with the exception of a strong aura of fear radiating from it that fueled the rage in Lance. He could hear its thoughts, of fear and confusion, and pain. Its thoughts were more than enough to betray its captor's actions- they had tried to break it of its loyalty to its original owner.

He was going to make sure they paid for their cruelty, he decided as he advanced closer to them, every bit the murderer and death seeker Lugia had declared him.

"Lance, stop!" Chuck's voice shouted from behind him, almost shocking the fury right out of him.

He steeled himself again, "They have to pay for what they did!"

Chuck growled at him, "And they will, Lance, but not like this."

"They tortured that pokemon!" he snarled, "They tried to break it, like some toy that could be deconstructed and recycled! These two need to pay!" he said, casting his disgust and loathing at them with his gaze and spitting snarl. They cowered before his rage. Good. They should be scared. They should be absolutely terrified, he thought.

"Please, please!" one of them begged, "We-we'll give it back, We'll give the pokemon back! We'll disappear, you'll never see us again!"

"And risk you preying upon the weak and defenseless another time? No."

Chuck's hands grabbed him by the shoulders, and Lance couldn't move any more, "That's enough!"

"Let me go!" Lance struggled, like a feral cat, "They need to pay!"

"Not this way, boy! Not like this!" Chuck snapped, forcibly dragging him backward from the men, illiciting a harder struggle from the furious boy. With Chuck busy holding him back, the two men scrambled to their feet and took off.

-o00o-

He found that he didn't like the pit of emptiness in his stomach.

He didn't like how Chuck gazed at him with pain, disappointment, and something erring on the side of caution.

-o00o-

The Shuckle was returned. Lance was a second's hesitance away from tearing into the thief when he realized two things. First, the man was missing his partner, the other half of his criminal duo that had owned the Raticate. Secondly, he walked, talked, and looked the part of a man who had been starving himself for the three days that had past since escaping Lance's wrath.

"I'm sorry. I'm so... so sorry." the thief uttered to Kirk, handing over the pokeball full of an anxietic Shuckle.

The thief then turned and left toward the harbor.

-o00o-

Lance watched him turn himself into the police, and disappear into the decks below of the police boat that was headed to the mainland.

-o00o-

Chuck was silent, eerily so, when Lance relayed the events to him under the dim lighting of candles late that night. He didn't speak for so long Lance thought he'd gone temporarily mute, but that wold have been ridiculous.

When he finally spoke, it was with a grave but measured voice, "If you had... if you had finished him, Lance, that man would never have had the chance to change. He would never have found the possibility of seeing his wrongs and trying to right them."

-o00o-

...Oh.

-o00o-

Lance had Lao, irritating and brazened Lao, naive and impetuous and annoying Lao up in the corner-figuratively speaking, as the boundaries of the dueling arena for their martial arts training were merely painted lines they had to stay within. One misstep, he dared to wonder, would be all it took for either of them to be at the others complete mercy. So, who would it be? Lao, practiced and confident, and utterly bright eyed? Or Lance, furious and relentless, whose eyes had become long ago disenchanted?

Both of them, evidently, as somehow they ended up knocking each other down. Even laid idle on his back, Lance ended up still trading kicks with Lao.

"You two," Chuck growled, "are going to make me start growing gray hairs and resort to stress eating." he said as he pulled them up and away from each other off the mats by their ears, "And then my wife's going to call me chubby, and then my whole martial arts career's going down the drain! So knock it off!"

"She already _does_ call you chubby." Lance elaborated unhelpfully, earning a cuff to the back of his head. "Ow!"

"Respect your sensei, boy." Chuck reprimanded. Lao attempted to play parrot but a withering glare from Chuck quieted Lao.

"Right, I apologize." Lance answered," She already calls you chubby, Chuck- _sensei-OW!_ "

-o00o-

"Seems like there's been a storm every week now..." Nanako muttered to herself in the electricity-less kitchen, as the third month bled into the fourth and Lance helped her light the candles in the house and gym. Chuck insisted on continuing training by candlelight even as the sun fell past the horizon. It certainly made training more challenging, Lance could attest that much. A tickle at the edge of his senses told Lance everything he needed to know about the storms.

-o00o-

"Hey, before you leave..." Chuck began, after a moment of absorption to Lance's declared plan to leave, "...how about a match, true Cianwood style?"

-o00o-

Cianwood Style, to elaborate, was a simultaneous pokemon battle _and_ a sparring duel between them. While Chuck's Poliwrath and Lance's Dragonite traded blows on one side of the field, Chuck and Lance would follow suit on the other end. It was a true contest of focus, between the opponent in front of him and the one in front of Dragonite, as well as a contest of trust between trainer and pokemon. He hadn't been so thankful in a long time for his still-remaining gift of telepathy that it was almost a downright shame.

Where Chuck struck him, his Poliwrath aimed for the same, blow for blow. Dragonite had the sheer power, thick hide, and uncanny agility to enable the dragon to duck, dive, dodge or outright absorb blows from Poliwrath. Lance lacked two of those three to share the same ability against Chuck.

"Your bond with your pokemon is undeniably strong, kid." Chuck said, looming over him after a devastating blow that cut Lance down to his knees-not completely out, but one solid hit away from it, surely, "But your heart needs to be able to stand on its own too. Or else what good are you, really, as their trainer?"

-o00o-

Lugia is somewhere in the islands out to sea, he knows that. He could feel the massive aura of the guardian somewhere in the islands, but the echo of his past run-ins with Lugia spurs him into a new inquiry. The Mask.

"You're bond with your pokemon is strong, but you don't have the raw power to handle a confrontation with the one you're looking for." Lance told Silver matter-of-factly.

Pupitar was traded to Silver.

-o00o- -o00o- -o00o- -o00o- -o00o- -o00o-

* * *

For reference to anyone who found it difficult to read, the mind-slam of words Lugia slapped Lance silly with are "Hate, Pain, Liar, Murderer, Torturer, Death-Seeker (x2), The Mask, Death-Seeker, The Mask Is Searching, Death-Seeker"

Review and let me know how you liked it, what interested you, or if you have questions or comments! Thanks for reading!

-KO13


End file.
